A Hundred Paper Airplanes
by FollowThisRhythm
Summary: Because it was you — Teddy and Lily — and it had always been you and your love and your paper airplanes. [To be edited; till then, proceed with caution.]


A/N. So, this is the first go I've had at second person in a while, and the first time that I've posted it. Although I am nervous, I was inspired by some authors (waltzingvelocity and Queen Nightingale, for example), and their lovely works finally convinced me to just go with it. :) I attempted to keep the tense consistent from beginning to end, and I believe that I've done well at that, but if you see any errors (or any mistakes just in general) then please let me know!

Time line: _i. _summer before Lily's first year at Hogwarts_ ii._ Beginning of seventh year_ iii._ Beginning of seventh year winter hols _iv._ Last day before the winter hols end.

(Edited: 6/25/11)

Disclaimer: Disclaimed!

**A Hundred Paper Airplanes**

scene i

___— _fly with me, don't let me go _—_

Your very first paper airplane was made in the summer of your eleventh year, several weeks before you were supposed to be leaving for Hogwarts.

You had thought that the closer the date got, the closer you came to finally being a part of the magic and the legacy, that you would have grown more and more excited _—_ that you would have been suffering from a constant onslaught of butterflies and sleepless nights and daydreams _— _and you had been.

But, not all of the butterflies were from elation, and not all of the sleepless nights were from anticipation, and not all of the daydreams were full of snitches and wands and cauldrons.

You hadn't even left, and yet you were already beginning to miss Teddy terribly; attached to his hip when he was there, writing notes asking him to be when he wasn't, because, as strange as it sounded, he was your best friend, and you didn't understand how you were supposed to make it through the weeks and months without seeing him.

Of course you two had gone through it before, when he was still leaving for Hogwarts before he had graduated, but it had always been _him_ leaving, and you had thought that had been difficult enough to swallow. Now, however, _you_ were the one doing all of the leaving, and no matter how much you wanted to go, there was a place inside of you just as great that didn't; the problem was that you had just been too afraid to tell him.

Despite how close you were, despite the fact he was your best friend, he had others _—_ people his age who were prettier and funnier and older _—_ and you just couldn't fathom how, when they were all there, he could miss you as much as you missed him. You hadn't wanted to scare him away or creep him out, though, so you hadn't said anything until that day in the summer of your eleventh year, just before you were set to leave for Hogwarts, when he had finally managed to pry it out.

You had been laying in the field behind your house, the sun beaming down and filling you up and warming your skin to a toasty temperature that made your eyes droop and body slump, when he managed to wheedle it out of you, having been desperately trying all day. So, you gave in; you told him every little thing that had been bothering you, confessing to him amongst the tall, swaying grass and the dipping song birds, and he had listened with a neutral face, his eyebrows pulled down and his arms behind his head. When you finished, you were certain that he was going to hug you, hold you close, smile _your _smile that did funny things to your tummy, and offer words of reassurance and comfort.

The first thing he said, however, after a moment of thought, was that you were an idiot.

He didn't bother apologizing for it when your mouth had fallen open and you moved to stomp away, stomach twisted with shame and embarrassment and anger, but instead he reached over to hold you down, to hold you there next to him, as he explained that _you _were _his _best friend; and you listened in hushed rapture as he explained that you were his number one, his favourite person, even when there was everyone else, _all of them_ _—_

Only he had laughed at that when you had said so aloud, as if it were a great big joke (and, had the relief and the joy that then crashed throughout your body not been so overwhelming, you probably would have joined in, too).

But you still had some doubts: So what if he thought you were easy to talk to? So what if he had known you all his life? So what if he felt the most like himself, the most grounded, when it was just the two of you?

You couldn't understand then how those were supposed to answer your questions or ease your worries, and you didn't realize either that those were some of the best things anyone could have said.

He'd understood this too, and in a last effort to appease you had asked: _Do you know how to make paper airplanes, Lily?_

And that had started it all as he taught you how to fold and told you of an ingenious thing you two could share, something only you and he would be a part of, which would link you together as best friends; he told you of a charmed paper, where only your touch would reveal the ink, and told you that, instead of sending owls back and forth, all you had to do was write your letter, fold it into a paper plane and then _—_ flicking your wrist _just so __—_ send it flying and he would receive it.

You had, of course, been so excited, so happy, so _smug_, as you grinned into the blurry faces of all the potential best friends who had wormed their way into your skull, and eagerly followed him, copied him, trying to get your planes just as perfect as his. They never were, of course, his lines and his creases always being flawless and yours slightly off, but you were too impatient to really put _too _much effort into being the perfectionist that he was; but in the end it didn't matter, because that summer had been the best of your (then) short life, while you talked and laughed and lounged and teased, humming and folding and purely enjoying every moment _—_

Because you were Teddy and Lily, and it had always been you.

scene ii

___— _we never could have stayed there _—_

If someone had told you earlier on in life that you would have been _there_, feeling _that_, (so far past only) wanting _him,_ you ... would have believed them completely; you would have thanked them, too, for seeing and informing you of what you had been too blind, too naive, to see.

How could you not have? How could you not have already seen and known when he had always been there, always been_ so much more_ than everything and everyone else you had ever known?

How could it ever have been anyone else?

But it never could have been anyone else; you just hadn't known that before then ___—_ and even when you finally realized as much and accepted your emotions, you hadn't understood it completely. You never had been very knowledgeable of all worldly things after all, even though at one point you would have declared passionately that you were, but in truth you hadn't known anyone who had any concrete idea of what love and life and happiness really were; someone could have felt it and believed that they knew it well enough for words, but they didn't, and you hadn't, never had, never would truly understand either.

That had been okay though: You had been fine with love being him, his face and his voice and everything about him down to the smallest, most trivial of things; and life being the feeling that he gave you, and happiness being the place you lived in whenever he was involved, had only ever felt right.

Only ___—_ you hadn't been feeling much love, save for the type that made your heart fiercely ache, or life or happiness, and you especially hadn't felt it when you pushed aside that fourth paper airplane, the fourth he had sent, the fourth in a row you would ignore, because you believed that was the way it had to be; that it was the only suitable route to make yourself stop hurting because feeling _that _for _him _when he was so far out of your league was the farthest thing from comical and the closest thing to a tragedy.

But, sometimes, you wondered whether or not you were doing the right thing, whether attempting to push him away to lose what you had was the best option, and whether it was even _possible _to break the cords and the ties that had forever bound you to him; he to you.

How could you when the ropes were so thick and so strong, fueled by years of affectionate ink sent between, and long days of heat and sunshine and the caressing, saccharine breathe of summer?

But, at the same time, how could you have afforded _not_ to cut them? How could you have afforded to fall deeper and deeper, harder, faster, when you had already passed the point of no return and were only floundering, drowning?

You hadn't wanted to cut off your air supply completely.

It had been _so impossible_, choosing between a rock and a hard place, and it hadn't been an unlikely occurrence for you to be hidden away in your bed, curtains drawing lines between you and the outside realm, protecting you in your little box, while you clutched the airplanes, your tears blurring the words ___—_

Because all you had been able to remember during those moments, during _every moment_, was all the ones spent with him: Laying side by side in the tall grass and staring up and up into the never ending expanse of cerulean and whispered words and cotton; the exact shade of auburn his hair had changed to as he drowsed; the lady bugs landing on your arms before zipping away. All you could remember was the seductive touch of the sun, rousing from beneath your skin another freckle to dust the tops of your cheeks and your shoulders and your legs, the fleeting sensation of his mouth against yours as you had leant down, in your third year, to kiss him _so your first kiss would be special _(which had only been partially true, of course, because while you had wanted it to be with someone precious and dear to you, you had also just wanted to know what it would be like to kiss _him_; you had known that he never, ever would have allowed you to find out of his own free will, however, which his immediate reaction following your action had been enough to prove, but that hadn't changed the fact that it had happened, and that for the briefest moment in time you two had existed almost as if you were one).

But all of those memories had just made you cry all the harder, your body lost inside of the sweater you had never bothered to give back to him, as you continued wondering and thinking and hoping that your blatant avoidance wasn't hurting him _too _much...

Some people, most people, would have thought that you were pathetic, that you were wrong, but you wouldn't have given a damn as you flipped them the bird because _no one _understood that _everything _had been wrong; you and him and the paper planes and your heart.

Because it had been you, Teddy and Lily, but you hadn't felt very close to either of those almost-strangers in a long time.

scene iii

___— _and I'm sending you my heart on these fragile wings _—_

It had always been the worst at night.

It had always been the worst when you were surrounded by the darkness and the black, with the only light emanating from the moon outside, slicing across the floorboards and the edge of your bed, to vaguely illuminate the non-existing world. It had always been the worst when you couldn't see the walls around you, and your every thought and your every emotion felt as if they were floating away from you like kites or balloons or fluttering dandelion limbs; when your hand was too slow to catch, or the current too strong to counter, and they just soared up and away because there was nothing keeping them inside of your head and inside of your room and inside of your heart.

It had always been the worst when you lay in bed with nothing but the ticking of the clock to keep you company; nothing but your mind that felt as if it could be breaking. It had always been the worst when everything was quiet and dark, when it felt as if you were the only person alive, when you felt as if everyone else were just illusions or mirages that lived with the sun and that you were the only living, breathing person in all of the world.

You had always been afraid of the dark, because you had always been afraid of being alone, and you had found that the night was as much of a balm as it was a whip. You didn't have to worry about sustaining those lying smiles or that tiring masquerade because there were no eyes to see, to wonder, to get under your skin and into your soul ___—_ but you never did have someone to hold you or breathe into your hair or kiss the side of your neck, either, on the nights when you were too full and too empty; when the obscurity, and the midnight air like smoke, was just overwhelming.

But, maybe, you never would have needed that if you and him had been _us_; them. Maybe being with him would have made all the difference in the world, all the difference between feeling as if you were going to explode or implode instead of feeling as close as humanly possible to completion.

Maybe that was the reason and the answer as to why you had found yourself with your quill and that charmed paper, writing down the dangerous lyrics of your heart unthinkingly:

_Things change, emotions grow, and sight becomes less clear than it was once before._

Some nights you had curled up into yourself, pulling your limbs up and close, letting your hair fall to provide some sort security, some sort of divider between the world you lived in and the world everyone else did, because both had been so very different. Some nights you had slipped downstairs when everyone else was sleeping, lighting the fireplace and settling into the chair closest, with that sweater you had never given back clutched tightly between your greedy fingers, pressed against your beating heart as you wished he could somehow fill the fabric again. You had just sat there, looking and feeling as if you were about to cave in on yourself, seeing but not absorbing the sight of the flames swaying like the lithe legs of a dancer; the haunting colours throwing into stark relief the colour of your too white skin, and stretching over the too bare walls to shed distorted shadows.

Only on some nights, because you were still Lily Luna and you were nothing if you weren't all that was fire and strength and stability (on the surface), you had cried; murmured little things that ran familiar tracks down over the planes of your face, following the lines all the previous ones had etched into your skin. You had stared and you had clutched and you had played everything over and over inside of your head, all of the possibilities and the choices and the dreams you had been too ashamed to admit you were still clinging to even after everything.

That night you had felt numb, so cold, even though the flickering heat of the orange, the red, the yellow, the blue flames were just to your right; you had felt so indifferent to the darkness, where the light couldn't reach, attempting to consume you.

Maybe that had been what propelled your hand to spill the secrets you had kept so long locked inside, so protected:

_The world will keep on spinning and the people will keep on moving regardless of one person and one heart, I know, but lately I've felt as if I'm about to sink, and that the current's too strong._

Would anyone be there to save you?

You had thought then, just as you had thought later, though, that you had written the letter because of him, because of the unexpected visit that shouldn't have been unexpected at all because he was always there during the holidays.

You had liked to blame him for your faults and your mistakes in the beginning, as you lay sobbing wretchedly into your blanket after he'd left, the echo of the slamming door repeating in your near silence tortuously, for the reason you had forgotten and been so shocked and thrown off balance at his arrival. But you had known, all along, that it had been your lapse, the result of your being so lost inside of your head and misery, so caught up within your relief of having time for yourself during the holiday, that had led you to forget he would (but of course he would) be there.

Your fault: And it made the memory of the confrontation all the more difficult to try and come to terms with and accept.

Even when you hadn't been looking at your door frame, where he had stood only an hour prior, you had seen him in your mind as clear as day, as if he were still there, livid and guarded and hopeful, with those eyes swirling with hundreds of veiled emotions ___—_

But he'd had every right to be as angry and frustrated as he had been, when all you had been doing was ignoring him, pretending to toss his paper airplanes (although, in reality, you just been storing them away at the bottom of your trunk where no one else would see); and there was a part of you that had wished that it could have all stayed so simple, that he wouldn't have felt anything more, that he wouldn't have looked so misplaced and so kind of, sort of, expectant, as if waiting for you to run into his arms and apologize and make everything (for the most part) okay.

And you had wished, just as much, that you hadn't wanted those same things so much, too, but he was Teddy and you could never truly want anything else but to be with him and to feel love and life and happiness.

Everything was a bit of a confused blur to you, as if you had been only half watching someone else single-handedly destroy their whole world in a matter of seconds, but you could remember well enough the way he had reached a hand out to brush the hair from your eyes, how you had _—_ _but _why_ had you?_ _— _winced before you could stop yourself; so used to shrinking away from his memory, so used to cringing from the feelings he stirred in you ...

And your movement had been the equivalent of your hand meeting his cheek or a sincere _I hate you_.

He had recoiled sharply, his voice had steadily grown louder, trembling with suppressed emotions as he spat and he cursed in a manner you had never witnessed before, demanding to know _why? Why_ were you ignoring him? _Why_ wouldn't you tell him what he had done? _Why _wouldn't you look him straight in the eyes? _Why _hadn't he heard from you since the summer holidays?

His face had echoed the hurt and incense of his tone, his hands going to rake through his mix of brilliant red and mousy brown hair, and you had fought back tears the whole time, lying, standing with your back erect and chin slightly raised as if what you were saying had been what you honestly wanted (_even when it _hadn't).

You _hadn't_ moved on, and you _hadn't _been too busy, and you _hadn't _forgotten to reply each time because of everything else going on within you life, and you had _not, not, not _been distracted by your (non-existent) boyfriend _— _!

But instead of telling him this, you had told him the opposite, and he seemed to believe you as his expression turned grave, his face becoming a sickly white, his throat swallowing audibly, and he had left with no words, no gesture, not even glancing at you when he turned, slamming the door behind him.

You had been certain that your family had heard your wailing from downstairs, as the whole lower level had gone eerily silent, but no one had come to interfere or disturb, which you were thankful for because you had never lost such complete control as you had then, while you shuddered and sobbed and wrote down the words you hadn't actually known whether or not you wanted to share:

_I'm not who I was before and neither are we and, even now, I'm still too afraid to admit in words why._

You still don't know what made you do it _— _what made you sketch the things that the furiously pounding organ inside of your chest couldn't say — what made you bring the paper to your face and press a kiss to it, your tears raining down to smudge the ink — what made you fold it and send it soaring out of your window — but you had, and you had watched it until you couldn't anymore; until it was just another of the brilliant specks in the sky, and you couldn't tell what was the plane and what were the stars _—_

Because you couldn't remember what it was like to be you, Teddy and Lily, and the sudden void was as terrifying as it was heart-breaking.

scene iv

_ — sing like you think no one's listening —_

You don't know when it started but, at some point from your fifth year and onwards, you had begun to use books as an escape: Chosen to dive into the slightly rough-under-your-touch pages instead of focusing on the pang within your chest; chosen to immerse yourself silently into other people's lives, fictional or not, rather than attempting to work or think through your own. It had been wrong, perhaps, to run away from yourself and hide, but it had been the only thing you could think of doing when everything had just kept revolving, turning to come back to the same place again and again.

Thinking and wondering and feeling had become repetitive, playing over and over like a broken record spitting out the same song, and just as it got to the brink of something new, to the edge of the next chord, it skipped and went back to the beginning.

Just the same as everything else had.

There had only been so many times where you could try to think about him and yourself and the situation, the impossibility and the passion, before you felt as if you were going to lose your mind.

Sometime in between the beginning and the end, you had grown sick of living inside of your own skin; sick of feeling something for someone who wouldn't feel the same for you, sick of waking up and falling asleep with the same face and the same love feeling as if it were about to burn you alive and swallow you whole.

Sometime in between the beginning and the end you had grown sick, pure and simple, of not being with him, and not belonging.

You never would have imagined that your story would turn out the way it had, that the one impulsive action you had been so sure you would regret for the rest of your life could have actually _made _it. You never would have imagined that the chapter during that point of your life would end with such a twist; you had dreamt bittersweet dreams, you had wished even when you thought your glow of hope had died like a burnt out star, but you had never actually believed there was any chance, any possibility. You had come to realize over time that nearly all of the best things, and all of the worst things, in life came in surprises _—_ like a rushing tidal wave or a fluttering butterfly, sudden or slow _—_ and had decided that it was a good thing that you were so fond of them_._

Yet, you had never loved one so dearly, never wanted to experience again and _again_ the emotions and the knowledge and just the _being_ of that night; you had never before been able to bear iteration, never been able to stand playbacks, never desired for a moment to just freeze for the rest of eternity, because you had always figured that there had to be an even better one coming up, and you had always been too impatient to wait.

You had never before wanted to just stay and be forever, for a lifetime, in one moment, _in that night._

It hadn't been an earth shattering confession, it hadn't been particularly romantic, not a scene where anyone else would have felt particularly envious of what you had just by a re-telling of the events, but that hadn't bothered you. You had never been very romantic yourself, and Teddy was so clumsy that he never would have been able to recreate one of those picturesque scenes from the movies and books; his charm was much more subtle and bumbling and you wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

You had been sprawled out across your bed, your cheek pressed against your arm as you stared blindly out of your window (having given up on the pretense of reading once your parents had left), inhaling the seductive promise of rain each breeze fluttering through your curtains and into your room brought, when it happened.

You had imagined up many different scenarios of response to your plane, with the worst being the ones where he refused to speak to you again, and the best being, admittedly, the ones where he swept you off of your feet in his own faltering way and snogged you senseless.

But, in reality, you had expected nothing more than a talk; for him to come to you when he could finally bear to so he could explain once and for all that he didn't feel the same way, that he was sorry, but it just wouldn't have ever worked.

What you hadn't expected to see was that paper airplane, alabaster and imperfect within its frenzied creation, glide into your room and land in front of you with a soft rustle and a silent tease; you had been lost inside of the wild panic and the wonder and the curiosity and the trembling fear that seemed to take over and rock your body at the sight of the (entirely blank) plane, and you hadn't understood what he had meant by sending the plane, with no note, no nothing, until you had heard the banging on the downstairs door.

(That was where your memory always liked to play tricks: where the rhythm and the flow halted and broke up, giving you pictures of sight, taste, touch, smell and sound, which flashed and faded but still managed to make your pulse race and your heart crash and _that silly_ _smile_ break over your face, so large it almost hurt.)

Somehow you had managed to make your way down the stairs, his plane clutched within your hand as you nearly flew down from your bedroom and wrenched open the door, his hand raised in a fist to continue his abuse.

You hadn't known how you managed to notice so many things so quickly before he spoke — like the almost painful disbelief in his eyes, the violent blue of his hair, the curve of his jaw (which you had always admired), the hard press of his mouth —, and you hadn't known how you managed to notice that your paper airplane was in his hand, the cinnamon of your lipstick kiss and the water stains of your tears visible, without loosing your balance, but you had.

His voice, rough with suppressed emotion, thick with confusion, bright with hope, had been what made your knees weak: _Tell me you do_.

But while you had heard him, understood the unmistakable meaning behind his words and gaze, your mind had been running a mile a minute, your heart trying to burst from your chest, and everything, every rip and every ache and every emotion he had ever made you feel, had bubbled to the surface and suddenly you hadn't been able to think as you sobbed. You hadn't been able to breathe as you cried that you loved him, you loved him, you loved him, and that you were sorry and, _please, don't let this change anything __—_

But you hadn't been able to continue with your crazed explanations and confessions because it had been impossible to do so when his hand had cupped the back of you neck, so tenderly, to tilt your head up; it had been impossible when his other arm wrapped around your waist loosely, to pull you close, and when his lips, so sweet and so earnest, moved to perform the dance you had dreamt of for _so _long_. _

Your toes had curled, your lips had tingled, throbbed, and your body had shifted so you were flush against him. You had felt his plane in your hand, your plane pressed into your lower back, grounding you when all you had felt like doing was floating, flying, soaring. Then he had murmured your name, told you that he was _so in love with you_ and you were crying again, familiar tears that weren't so familiar at all, as you fell into him and into love and life and happiness _—_

Because it was you, Teddy and Lily, and it had always been you and your love and your paper airplanes.

_— & —_

* * *

A/N. Please, do not favourite this without leaving a review! x


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